Blacks and Grays
by Videre
Summary: Gin wasn't going show up in the middle of the night with a small white flower to tuck into her hands and an insincere apology on his lips this time. A series of GinRan dabbles.
1. A Life in Monochrome

_A/N: I just needed to get this little dabble out of my system. Nothing serious._

_A/N 2: I've decided to make this into a little series. I have so many little ideas for this pair I just need a place to keep them all!_

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A Life in Monochrome

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Gin couldn't see much, the corners of his vision growing progressively darker and fuzzier with each passing second, but what little he could see was dominated by the color gray. There was something - his hair, maybe - scattered just inside his otherwise black vision that seemed to make his entire world glow with the drab color. It was something familiar to him, at least... the color had defined much of his life. His hair, his name, his loyalties...

His loyalties. When he was young he had once heard someone say that people just couldn't be defined by black or white. Nothing was so simple and no one so pure as to merit those colors, they said. The blackest of black souls were merely very dark gray, they had told him firmly, eyes flashing with conviction. It was all a spectrum of grays. He had known what they meant, of course - he was a clever child, after all - but he never thought much of it until this instant.

He could see it now, though. As clearly as he could see his own gray hair, he could see his entire life played out in the simple spectrum of colorlessness.

It wasn't all gray, though. The slums had been as black as pitch to him... and the eyes of the traitor had been too.

He was more aware of the implications of his decisions than people knew, or at least more than they wanted to realize. He knew Aizen was as black as the street scum he grew up in... he was more familiar with the color than most, after all. He recognized it in the beloved captain before anyone else, in fact.

It wasn't that he didn't know evil when he saw it, it was that he just didn't care. He didn't have any twisted morals or deluded power trips to hide behind, either. He knew what it was... what he was.

Gin's reasons for the betrayal were as gray as he was, though. He didn't intend to ever explain them to anyone either. They didn't need to know.

Rangiku would be so mad at him, he thought with a bland smile that cracked his injured face painfully. She always wanted to know what he was doing and why he was doing it... she wanted it all wrapped up in a neat little package with no questions and no grays. Alcohol did that for her, he had always thought, and that was why she loved it so much.

He could give her food when was hungry, he could give her a home when she was alone in the world, he could give her most everything he had with a little grin plastered on his face... but he couldn't give her simplicity.

He was gray in every sense of the word, complicated and unclear and entirely beyond wrapping into a neat little package. It was his most basic nature - his essence to the core of his being - that he would never be able to give her what she needed. He wouldn't - couldn't - give her the answers she needed or a pretty little bow.

He couldn't give her _white._

And as strange and as gray as it seemed to him... as he lay there dying, shrouded in the blackness he had surrounded himself with, he regretted only that.


	2. A Hundred Goodbyes

_A/N: This is the second little dabble. I think I like this one a bit better, actually. I hope you enjoy it!  
_

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A Hundred Goodbyes

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Rangiku had never been very good at saying goodbye. She avoided awkward farewells like the plague, preferring to disappear until the person was well and gone then drink herself to oblivion in their absence. That way she didn't have to give shaky hugs, or smile teary smiles when all she wanted was to curl into herself and cry. She didn't have to fake her bubbly personality, or force herself to tell white lies...

Luckily she hadn't been faced with many really important departures in her lifetime, especially since she had started with absolutely nobody. People who moved in and out of her life quickly weren't a problem, and until recently there were very few people who were truly fixtures in her life.

Gin was the first person she had ever been attached to. He had made himself a place in her life the instant he appeared in it, his fox-like grin embedding itself in her heart as a reminder of her first home... the home he had given her. Even years later as she listened to the hushed murmurs about the frightening Third Division captain and his snake-like grin, she couldn't help but feel at home when she saw the familiar expression on his face.

"What are ya smilin' about, Ran-chan?" he had asked her once when he had caught her absorbing the familiar expression. His face tilted curiously to the side and his grin grew dangerously wide as he spoke.

"What, can't a girl just be happy?" she had responded, since they never told each other the truth. She had a feeling he knew anyway.

Their entire relationship was like that. It was a constant series of half-truths and omissions she had grown adept at interpreting over the years. The only problem was that for as much as she did understand there was always twice as much she could never grasp, and Gin, who seemed to understand everything, seemed perfectly content to leave her in the dark.

It may have been this tendency or it may have been something else entirely, but it hadn't taken her long to realize that he was the sort of person she was doomed to say goodbye to over and over again. His penchant for leaving without telling her where he was going or what he was doing certainly saw to that. It wasn't quite the same as those hated farewells, though. She knew how to say goodbye to Gin, whether it be from practice or because she always knew he would come back. She could do it without the tears or the sake... she could do it without feeling much at all by the end.

But this was different.

This time Rangiku was sure he wasn't coming back. He wasn't going to appear seemingly out of nowhere on the steps of their little dirt shack, smiling at her like he had never been gone at all, or show up in the middle of the night with a small white flower to tuck into her hands and an insincere apology on his lips.

"What have you done this time, Gin?" she heard herself murmur into her cup of sake, unable to think about anything except the one man who she was just now realizing she had never really let go of. It seemed that for all the hundreds of little farewells they had, she never truly let herself really say goodbye to him after all.

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End file.
